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SECTION 7

MAINTAINING THE PLAN

I have to start this section with a few stories. As odd as they may sound, these
were actual experiences. As they say, truth can be stranger than fiction.
In the first instance, I was conducting a project management seminar for
the engineering department of a major U.S. city. On day three, I was about to
open my discussion on Change Control and Scope Management, when the city
engineer stopped me and said, “You can skip this session, Harvey. We don’t al-
low changes.”

The second incident was reported in my local newspaper, just the other day.
The executive director for the Center for Environmental Sciences and Technol-
ogy, at Albany University, had just announced a major addition to the facility. Re-
sponding to speculation that the project was behind schedule and over budget,
the director stated that these claims were unfounded, because these two items
had not been established. “We never announced a date to start or a specified cost
for the project,” he said during an interview with reporters.

I suppose that a project manager’s life would be much simpler if there were
never any changes to the workscope, and if the schedule and cost never had to be
cast in concrete. But, for most of us, that’s not the way it works. The typical proj-
ect has a defined workscope, and a target schedule and budget. Therefore, a basic
component of managing the project consists of maintaining the plan, and manag-
ing changes to the plan.

Of all the areas of discussion on project management, it is Maintaining the
Plan that allows for the most diversity, both in philosophy and in effort. If we
were to poll the users, we might get responses such as these:

• We’re too busy doing the work to bother maintaining the plan.
• The plan keeps changing. It is too difficult to maintain.
• In planning, we get 70 percent of the benefit from 30 percent of the effort.

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